How Can Small Businesses Adapt to Covid-19 to Stay Afloat?

I thought about this long and hard: How can I be of help during these strange and somber times? I'm not a health care provider. Im not a billionaire or a vaccine producing lab. So, while my heart genuinely goes out to those who have lost someone, I'm forced to leave the actual life saving part to the experts – I'm useless.

However, being a small business owner and entrepreneur myself, and having consulted large corporations on organic growth and creative marketing, I feel I have something quite unique I can contribute with. For those indirectly affected – the millions of small business owners, freelancers and homemakers out there. For those who often work as hard as anyone, yet tend to be picked last in the "gym class" that is life – where the governments are gym teachers.

This unprescedented situation we're all in, calls for creativity. Creativity to find a way to help others – creativity to find a way to survive until the storm is over. What am I good at? Being creative; finding solutions and finding a way out of almost any situation. Now I'd like to try to put this ability to use. Maybe I can help someone out there have a better chance of saving their business, their livelihood, keeping their family safe. This is what it's all about, is it not?

How? I've done some research. I'll start out by sharing some inspirational ideas and strategies implemented by other businesses in a bid to keep their businesses alive. Let's have a look at what some others have done, to see if we can learn from them or perhaps find that spark of inspiration needed to keep your own business safe and sound.

Here goes. And I'm keeping this (almost) marketing jargon-free. After all, my goal is to help as many businesses and entrepreneurs as I possibly can. Enjoy, try them out for your business – SHARE this post with anyone you think might need some inspiration or a motivational kick in their rear-end. This is not the time to give up! If you have any other ideas or suggestions, please COMMENT!

1. Cater to the at-risk populations

Several grocery stores and other local shops have started custom opening hours, allowing only at-risk populations (people of a certain age, or those with compromised immune systems or underlying medical conditions, particularly respiratory related) to visit the store at a given time.

For example, a grocery store in Venice, Italy, is closed for the general public between 8am and 12pm. Their staff is careful to sanitize all touch points prior to opening. After lunch, they open the store up for everyone else.

Benefits: “New” customers. You are enabling the at-risk population to visit your store(s), in other words increasing your customer base and revenue.

2. Facilitate Virtual Shopping and Live videos

Many businesses such as online stores have taken to social media to daily showcase and profile some of their favorite products online, to new and existing customers.

The Happy Baby from Ontario, Canada, received so many orders they had to temporarily close their online store, after the small business owner decided on a 40% off sale in combination with live video product showcases on social media. Think of it as virtual shopping – this one might just stick around post-corona times too!

Benefits: Increasing traffic. You are bringing your shop, your products, your personality and your customer service directly to the customers in their own homes. You are also taking advantage of a situation where everyone is home and likely bored.

3. Tailor customer service (invest spare time, secure your future)

There is no way around it: For as long as the Corona virus is keeping its stronghold on our society, you will have fewer customers. You now have two options: You either spend your spare time finding new customers virtually, through ads, social media, or other strategies, or you focus on your pre-existing leads and customers you’ve already served.

Reach out to your customer or lead lists, and simply ask them if they have any questions! Most customers/leads will have questions they never had time or could bother asking – but now they actually have time on their hands, and if you reach out to answer their questions for free, more likely than not, they will discover they need your services.

So now is the time to not only incentivize them to book now, but to upsell your services and help them with their problems in any way you can. A dental clinic in Denmark did exactly this, when they introduced a free online consultation service on their website and called up all of their customers and leads to have them “ask any question” and offer them a discount if they ordered within 7 days.

Benefits: Creating “super users”. By going the extra mile, you are maximizing the extra time you now have on your hands to create super users: You are improving your brands’ relationship with existing customers and leads, which will certainly pay off both short term and long term. Fill up that schedule for when you are back in business, and at the same time create customer evangelists who will stick by your brand and recommend it to friends and family.

4. Help customers help you

If your customers cannot use your service in the way they were used to pre-corona, you have to adapt your physical offering. Some restaurants have picked up on this opportunity in great ways: An Ohio, USA based diner introduced, for the first time, a drive-through service, where you can drive up to their restaurant door where someone (wearing a mask) hands you the food you ordered online or over the phone.

Others have set up booths and makeshift order desks at the parking lot. Hand-written “drive-in” signs have been placed outside, and their website and phone lines have been updated to let their customers know they can still order food and pick it up safely.

Benefits: This is an obvious one: Increase traffic by letting the same old customers use your service in the same-old way, in new ways.

5. Build (on) your online presence

We all know what we should be doing to drum up more business for our brand, regardless of industry and whether it is products or services you’re selling: Keeping an updated, SEO friendly blog. Still, most small business owners fear the time this will take to maintain, outweighs the benefits. This is likely not the case, however, and what better time to start than right now, when business is slower, and your online presence is ever-more important

Benefits: Get more traffic to your website, short term, but especially long term. Spend this strange period in history to build your brand presence to increase the chances of an even brighter future than pre-Corona.

6. Catch the dreamers, hook the doers

People right now are putting their immediate plans on hold, but that doesn’t stop them from keeping plans – and dreams – alive! This is a time when people are going to get increasingly frustrated with their life in isolation and their inability to work towards their goals, whether that is health and fitness goals or other personal goals.

People will likely be increasingly receptive to any product or service they think will help increase chances of reaching their goals as fast as possible post-Corona. They want to make up lost time, and many will be eager to line up their post-Corona existence in the best way possible.

A Norwegian nutrition service is using this strategy at the moment, with pre-signups and special offers that promise to “…help you reach your goals as quickly as possible after Corona”.

Benefits: Fill up your customer lists, turn leads into paying customers.